When the transport helo brings the field teams back to the /Liberty/, there's a clear priority with regard, particularly, to those operating on the ship for that extended cruise: Assurance that no one is infected. It's not a bad quarantine-- there's custom-cooked food, more or less free reign on entertainment requisitions, and attention from several doctors and nurses.

Once the blood tests and scans are clear and no one manifests a skin-shearing, bone-grinding secondary mouth, each of the operatives are interviewed on their mission reports, and then ushered into an (initially) quiet briefing room. In one of the comfortable black leather seats surrounding a round table of smooth steel sits Albert Wesker, the Colonel's aide setting up tea service as soldiers enter, and pouring their choice of tea or coffee.

Wesker skims pensively through the various mission reports and bagged evidence on display, having no difficulty keeping himself occupied while the others arrive. What a world.

Andrei Kirov goes through this process with a great deal of impatience. Clearly being on another boat was not exactly his idea of what should be waiting for him when he got back. Yet he went through the process. Got his gut patched up a bit more effectivly by an actual doctor with a pair of clean tweezers.. and well you get the point.

The bad news is that no one could seem to get the man's shotgun away from him, which he constantly kept trying to steal from wherever they kept their gear aboard the ship. By this point, either through just sheer inertia or him smuggling it, he'll walk into the briefing room with the shotgun tied to a bit of leather, held over his shoulder as he moves.

A quick glance about the room is offered, and Wesker is given a curt nod before he moves to settle down off to the side of the table, to Wesker's left. "Weskeroo, My favorite blues brother, Hero of Raccoon City, just the man I wanted to see." He'll respond rather cheerfully as he settles down in his spot, crossing one leg over the other as he leans back and slouches slightly, gaze shifting to the rest of the room. "Just gonna say now, I'm taking like six months of shore leave after this. Think I got gangrene or something."

Cassie endures the quarantine and makes the best of things as she can. She's been through quite a bit in her lifetime, so something like this isn't going to make her that unhappy. She gets through it with little difficulty, and she even keeps the mood light by cracking a few jokes here and there. Of course, that was then.

Unlike Andrei, who greets Wesker rather casually, Cassie is all about business and things like that when she enters. She stops to salute Wesker respectfully before taking a seat quickly, not wanting to waste time with unnecessary things if she can avoid it.

Stadler was used to quarientine, by know. He'd been in it twice, watched /other/ people go in it, trained in it, and he was pretty goddamn sure he was seeing a procedure from a white paper he wrote 3 months ago on the subject. So he doesn't complain to getting patched up and watching movies. Certainly the cabin wasn't as nice as the cruise ship, but they brought him a goddamn hamburger cooked incredibly rare, and that was enough to him. It was rare enough to be a general concern, but the man had been ordering his steaks like that for ages, so what the hell.

And once they're done, Richard gives his mission brief, dresses in his Class Bs (because he was a goddamn officer), and walks into the briefing room himself. Like Andrei, he had a firearm on him at all times. Pistol, mostly, but he had been carrying that Carbine behind, as well. And he's got that Umbrella side arm he pulled out of Racoon city with him now, strapped to his hip.

"Government work is 4 weeks a year, Kirov." He says, as he collapses into the leather chair. "But I might take some of it. I hear Paris is just amazing this time of year. I don't think this should take long. You have the agenda?" He asks Andrei.

"I'm taking an advance for the next six years then Stadler." Again Andrei offers incredibly informaly then as his eyes shift to look at the man. Apparently over the past two weeks he had grown a bit of a fuzz on his face under his gasmask. One that apparently itches as he scratches at his face. "Think I earned it, you know... working so hard to make sure the mission su-oh.. right." Andrei will sigh then for a second as his eyes drift closed for a second.

"I thought of it while they were spraying me down with some sort of lime or somethin." He'll mutter, arms crossing. "There are four points of order that would make this fairly easy to understand. The situation as it evolved on the ship, before we arrived and early on. Second is the.. assorted groups and perosnalties and their actions. Third will be Bioweapons encountered. Fourth is the end result, the goods, the evidence. Any questions?"

"Six months personal leave after every harrowing mission-- seems fair." Wesker observes dryly. His sardonic agreement doesn't make it any more likely to happen, either. He tosses a salute back to those who enter, but doesn't seem to have time to worry about those who treat him informally, either. There's a lot of business on the table.

"That sounds like a reasonable angle of approach. Go ahead, Kirov, Stadler-- what were you able to determine about the origins of the crisis?" Icy blue eyes survey the soldiers involved as they speak, the Colonel calmly laying his shades on the table.

There is a firm knock at the door - the knock all cops had. The slight stomp of boots, and then someone pulling the door open with formal force.

A uniformed FBC agent stands stiffly, holding the door open as Rachel steps in - signature blonde hair slathered over her face and spilling over an ill-fitting and horrifically blue Chinese prisoner uniform. Even though she'd been rotting in wherever they kept her for how long, she still looks like she's ready for a photoshoot somewhere - clean, presentable, and wearing the damn thing like it was a fashion statement, standard-issue boots click-clacking as she unsteadily glances around the room.

Even though her eyes are covered as always, the confusion's palpable - an aura of "what am I doing here again?" She settles for a chair at the back of the room, sitting primly and crossing her legs (again with the imaginary modeling), hidden eyes on Wesker as she fiddles with her hair. No one took a look at Wesker and thought he wasn't in charge, after all.

Stadler tsks. "I'm good with paperwork, but even I can't give you six months of leave without you having a goddamn kid. And trust me, I'd be looking into that." He says. Looking around the room to everyone assembles. Cassie, Wesker, and... Goddamn, was that the FBC mission commander? She didn't look too good, right now. Just... still in that jump suit, and not looking like she knew where she was. Concerning... very concerning, but he could have a talk with her later. Again, he's moving to address the room itself, going into a professorial mode.

"All right. From the passenger standpoint. I was on vacation aboard the ship, taking the standard PTO. The incident started slowly. As is standard for most of these events, critical mass was reached in part because both civilians and authorities refused to indicate or take nessecary measures to treat the full scope of the problem when it started occuring. Civilians were noted talking about it, as if rumors, but putting it out of mind. Crew, from what I could gather, were securing them underdecks, instead of reporting them to authorities. This is an expected reaction, which we will get to in section 4, but the short of it is, by the time containment broke, proper nuetralization of BOW elements was impossible. Evacuation was hindered by a poorly disciplined crew taking control of the life boats. Most survivors were limited to a handful of determined personell a few days after the outbreak. I managed to scorunge the Captain's firearm and keycard, the later we will get to in Section 4, and scorunge for supplies, awaiting actions from authorities off ship. FBC arrived shortly thereafter. Kirov?" He says, indicatinng the other man?

Andrei's attention will not be on Stadler at that time, his hand dismissvly waving off the first part of his comment. Instead his gaze will of settled upon Foley as she enters, his left brow ticking up as she steps inside. He had heard she was alive but to be honest.. she had had better days. Though to be fair he didn't know what those were. He'll hear his name then though and pull his attention back to Stadler then.

"Oh right. We climbed up on the ship, Foley, Caio, Caldwell, Chase and myself engaged in a firefight with some uh.. undead and bioweapons then ended up splitting up. During that time I made contact with some of the survivors and offered to trade them supplies, firearms and ammunition in exchange for furthering F.B.C's mission. Offering them an opportunity to extract didn't help either. Things seemed to be progressing fairly well. We gathered supplies, weapons and ammunition. Made contact and were progressing with setting up camp to move onto figuring what happened. During our regrouping session where I hoped to reveal my plans to enlist civillians to blow the ship.. we were attacked by bioweapons again and split. It was during this time that we would not be seeing our Commander Foley again."

There was a chuckle then as he continue, "Before we knew what had happened though I had finally met one Isaiah Ho..somethin or other. Leader of Terrasave on that ship. He informed me of a crew elevator that could take us down to the lowest decks. It needed to be repaired however. This happened on the same day that one Leon Kennedey and Laura Herron, both D.S.O agents sealed off the bridge and ended up stopping the ship." He'll pause for a second then as he leans back. "That brought about some interesting company indeed."

A foot shakes. Rachel continues playing with her hair, lips pursed like she wants to say something, but knows it'll come out as stupid. The confusion has gone down somewhat, but whenever "Commander" is attached to her name, that gets her eyebrows raised. Or, rather, where the hair was on her brow moving in a questioning manner. Either way, she continues to keep silent, letting the others talk. If she was as good at piecing together info as the dossiers said, she'd know everything in no time... right?

Meanwhile, Cassie simply sits listening attentively. She is not one to look bored or anything like that. Instead, she simply tries to process everything mentally. She's not saying anything for the time being though.

Stadler keeps looking at Rachel as Andrei talks, looking for that sort of recognition. That... eureka moment that would bring it all flooding back... but it wasn't something he saw, so far. More concerning, and he didn't know if it was what was on that ship or what was in that prison, but either way, it was bad. Still, they were in the briefing, and Stadler would pick up where Andrei left off.

"Once the ship stopped, we had a first attempt at rescue. Chinese commandos and a UN medical team landed on some MI-24s. Swept the upper deck of the ship, tended to the wounded. We were about to be extracted..."

He pauses, for a moment. "That's when things got worse. Umbrella commando team landed after that. Chinese never stood a chance; they were taken by suprise, guned down on the deck. Helicopters were shot down by what looks to be an A/V-8 that was flying support. That one got whomped by another MI-24, but that was the end of our air support. FBC assests managed to escape the helideck, and moved down to the lower decks, where we released the undead to slow Umbrella down. I will note it was a sound call at the time; letting them accomplish their mission uninhibited would have been catasrphic." He says, moving back to Andrei. "I beleive Kirov found something, in the meantime

"It was a great call. Would of done it if everyone else had extracted and only what remained of the infiltration team and the chinese were all that was left on the boat." Andrei responds rather drykly as he lifts a finger to point at Stadler for a second before he sighs. "After Commander Foley's removal from the scene by the chinese... and the arrival of an unmarked kill team.. Things became much more intense. They secured the crew quarters just outside of the now locked bridge by the D.S.O., repaired teh elevators which I had only just found out about and began trying to make their way to the lab underneath the ship." Andrei sighs as his fingers tap at the table his eyes drifting closed.

"At this point I considered the objective to blow the ship scrapped. As it stood, we were down two explosives and both Umbrella and the Chinese were just as likley to blow the ships themselves. I Suggested we try and kill the Umbrella agents.. which we were unable to do and it ended up coming back to haunt us. Regardless. People died at that point.. and we needed to find a way out. I began investigating some hidden accessways in the ship used for maintence and found a heli under the pool."

He'll pause then as he considers. "I deigned not to inform the team, or Stadler of this until we were ready to extract.. as I did not want information to get out and to have some success for the mission. Word eventually got out on the ship that Chris Redfield.. a famous name from Raccoon City was aboard in the bottom of the ship. It was suspicious.. but our objective took us down there anyway. We walked into an ambush.. by Umbrella soldiers and bioweapons. While we were down there we discovered the lab and likley source for the outbreak.. encountered numerous unusual infected.. ended up killing most of the umbrella team except for one agent and.. ah.. then ran for our lives as the ship proceeded to self-destruct." A beat. "As I told you they would do Stadler."

Wesker listens. Observes. His thoughts about Agent Foley-- or the mission as a whole, for the initial phases of the discussion at least, are hard to discern. A statuesque wall of stern stoicism, the S.T.A.R.S. survivor listens to the account with all the weight and attention such a thing is due.

When his expression breaks slightly, it's into a thoughtful frown and furrow of brows, "And did they, Major?" Wesker interrupts the standard flow of information for that rather critical piece. There may be some satisfaction to the effective promotion-- paperwork and the op's survival work did wonders for Stadler's cred in the beauracracy... but it may be slightly offset by the subtle sarcasm in the inquiry and its addendum clarification, "Accomplish their mission."

Then again, they -did- just defend flooding the cruise ship with infected. It deserves at least a cant of the head. Alongside the looming issue of whatever the lone survivor escaped with...

Rachel purses her lips and leans forward, the foot-shaking slowing to a slightly less irritating pace as she leans forward, pursed lips tensing at the mention of humans dying. Now, zombies, giant bugs, things that looked like a documentary on deep-sea life, and angry reptiles with cancer for a face dying were A-OK on her watch, but someone with a lifetime of /not/ eating peoples' faces, someone with parents and maybe kids, someone who had a life, someone with hopes and dreams (and God if she wasn't being cheesy)...

She opens her mouth to say something, then realizes interrupting a conversation with the guy who /meant/ business would be a bad idea, remaining silent.

Meanwhile, Cassie showed some slight hints of what could be uneasiness or suspicion, but other than that she's been doing good at keeping quiet. She really has little to say, and she's starting to regret not having more of an active role in things.

Stadler looks over to Wesker, for a moment, his eyes peering through his eyeglasses to meet the ones that were blocked by black shades. He didn't so much turn it into a contest of will as just raised his own, showing he wasn't going to fold here. "One enemy survivor got off the ship. It's unclear as what he managed to pull out of the wreckage. Agent Kirov managed to pull the data off them, but they may have gotten out with some samples." A pause. "We were seperated. Down one agent, using scavenged weapons aganist a numercially superior force that was better armed and better trained, who knew exactly where they needed to go on the ship. Beyond the standard infected, we had to deal with one T-100 type, an unknown type that looked like a woman with a pecular form of mimicry that was designed to attract rescuers. Lickers, as well, modified, armored ones different from the Raccoon city incident. And, of course, I cannot forget that one of the more deadly umbrella commandos mutated in that little trap the agent had set below decks. After we had demolished as much of the area as we could with explosives. A giant spider that chased us up the goddamn elevator, survived another explosives, and I'm almost certain consumed the bodyguard of a Tricell scientist. Give the situation, I think we did a damn find job of getting the hell out of there with what we could, and killing what Umbrella operatives we couldn't, sir. I beleive we would be ready to present what evidence we have?"

Andrei will take a second to lift his shoulders then, lips pursing slightly as his hand comes up to rub at his chin, chuckling softly. "If you are asking if Umbrella completed ther mission? Yes. They got the most 'important' peice of data. The Virus samples I suspect. I saw one of them grabbing little vials.. and he was the one that managed to get away. The other two collected bioweapon data and computer records of what I assume are experiments. Those two? Those two did not make it out and I most certainly have the computer files.. though I'm not certain if the bioweapon samples made it through the helicoptor crash." Andrei responds as his eyes shift then as he moves to pull out from his pockets and persons a few bits of information then.

One will be intimatley familiar to Richard, a peice of folded paper. The other is what appears to be a drive of some sort, and the final bit a cellphone which are then spaced out evenly before the man.

"Not forgetting Stadler's keycard which implicates the Captain as on Umbrella's take as that opened basically every door on the ship, as well as Caio's handgun which he found on the ship with markings that identfied the commoando team as being Umbrella agents. These are the three things I know we have."

He'll motion first to the drive. "All the information on Umbrella's experiments and records I suspect. Agent Redfield.. the guy who survived? He wanted all the data pulled and deleted from the lab computers qutie badly. Killed the man who took em and took it off his body." A beat then. "Then uh.. you found this one Stadler.. let you talk about that." A beat before he motions to the final peice. "This uh document here is fairly useless.. but it indicated to me that there was a facility that was in the process of being shut down on the Paradise Isles. Umbrella Owned. The ship normally operated in the Carribean didn't it? So it is safe to assume this was housing samples.. possibly transporting them from the recently shut down branch."

"I'm not diminishing your accomplishments, Stadler. -Our- mission was also, largely, a success." A sample of T-Abyss might have been nice, but not every level ranking can be 100% when you don't char select Wesker, obviously. "But we all know how important it is to weigh future threats. Especially from a source as omnipresent as Umbrella." The prosecution of many a fall guy in the American wing; the ongoing hunt for rogues thereof... it -might- slow the behemoth. A little.

A wave of Wesker's hand indicates Kirov after the man speaks. "Case in point." The Corporation has their fingers in everything. Wesker opens up the laptop he brought to the meeting, isolated from the network and equipped with state-of-the-art I.C.E. and ICEbreakers, is gifted with the drive connection. "We'll likely have to work at this a bit to get in, but good work, again. We'll get analysts on your field footage and see what we can figure out about the modified B.O.W.s. We'll need to flag Paradise Island as a potential hotspot; get some eyes local."

The FBC Commander spins his shades on the table, face pensive. "This mission raises a disturbing likelihood I considered after Raccoon City--" the Colonel pauses dramatically, taking a moment to survey those gathered before continuing with the heavy conclusion, "We have to assume un-reported outbreak situations will become the norm, if they're not already arising globally. The early stages of a militarized contagion's outbreak are not something most people are equipped to understand or deal with."

Even the team has some issues accepting any part of it as vaguely normal; of course, it's hard to blame them. To the veteran operative, it's all shades of man's inhumanity to man. Wesker sighs quietly, and leans back in his chair, nodding to Rachel. "Did you have something, Foley?" The Colonel doesn't miss much. "Welcome back, by the way." Even if she -should- be in medical.

"Besides the fact I'll never look at Chinese food the same way again?" She jokes, weakly, with a smile as weak as her joke. "My head's still hurting and, uh... well, I'm missing a few days from my calendar. I suppose I should mention I don't remember being a commander, since /that's/ more pressing."

She leans forward a little, eyes(?) sweeping the room to glance at everyone present. "I remember the ship, and I remember the Chinese grabbing me, and, obviously, zombies and BOWs, but everything else is a haze. They told me I should debrief first before they put me into Medical. Aside from the gaping holes in my memory, a headache that reminds me a bit too much of a hangover, and a /really/ strong sense of deja vu, I'm okay, otherwise."

Stadler gives Wesker a look that might be just a tad too long, but that's all he does. Defense was needed in some games of the bureacracy, but it was important to note that they were still on the same side, and empire building served very little right now. "Understood. We do need to make sure we know what sort of future threats might come out. Granted, it's going to give us a lot more nightmares, but at least we'll be on the front line."

The laptop does get a bit of tension, but he relaxes, for the moment. Wesker might be a lot of things, but 'stupid' wasn't one of them. If that laptop wasn't secured six ways from sunday, then this organization was in a lot worse shape than he thought. "Paradise island... that's going to be trouble. Thankfully, it's an island, but there's a large tourist population there. If there is an outbreak, there's going to be a lot of people asking for resources that'll be hard to deploy."

He leans forward, for a moment. "Most people aren't. And if this is going to be the norm, we might be looking at multiple local or regional outbreaks straining resources. I've read the documentaiton, and if it gets to that level, this carrier might as well just start hosting Constitutal Continunity Coordinators on a rotating basis. We need to start working with other agencies on more heavy response plans. Standardized training of local forces..."

He trails off. "Getting a bit high level. Sorry, I'll focus." He says, tapping the letter on the table. "This, I found while digging around the ship. It's on Umbrella America letter head, but it's encypted, and I'm a genius at many things, but math isn't one of them. We need to get it analyzed."

And finally, looking over to Rachel. There's... not much he can say there. He's not sure if she needs comforting, being shaken awake. "I'm... sorry to hear of everything that happened to you. I didn't know you before the ship, but if you need to talk... I might be able to glean some insight. Catch something medical might miss."

Andrei in comparison to Wesker and Stadler appears slightly less sympathetic. He might appear amused, sure but everything made the man turn into a fit of giggles these days. Instead he doesn't give the woman much attention at all except only when she talks, and even then for only a few seconds. "They were taking the bioweapons somewhere after all. They were not going to keep them all on the boat."

His hands lace together, resting his mitts in his lap as his eyes drift closed again. "Furthermore.. there are a number of bioweapons on that boat that I had never seen before. Besides your standard walkers.. there were these giant carpace like creatures with tongues that they shot out. Good at climbing walls. Killed two of them personally.""Then there was this giant ass tenctacle beast that lived in the water park area of the ship. Saw it when I was trying to snatch an SMG, ran when I saw the water moving."

"Then there was the Human Mimic. Took the apperance of a young woman. spoke, cried, everything.. and then whe you got close it turned into this weird creature with a massive lashing tongue or tentacle for a face. I don't know if there was only one of them or if I encountered multiple ones. Fought it or them at least three times. It was present during the final fight against Umbrella's forces."

"There was something that sort of reminded me of the beast at the Police Station, Wesker. Except much bigger, stronger and it didn't use any guns. Instead it just tore everything apart and sustained massive damadge."

"Then the spider which grew from one of the Umbrella operatives as Stadler Observed."

"It's all well and good to figure out what might work..." Wesker even empathizes. "But another to get the world's governments and armed forces on the same page in terms of acknowledging and combating the threat." Instead of exploiting it, covering it up, any number of nice and dangerous options that mankind so loves to figure they can get away with, this time.

Thankfully, the F.B.C. has access to some excellent codebreakers. From the look Wesker gives the document, it's possible his own mind is combing it over as he scans. Or perhaps he's just an expert at pretending to read.

"You were the Agent in Charge of this op until you were seized, Foley." Wesker explains of the Agent's 'commander' status. "You should get some rest, and we'll go over what all you remember and don't -after- medical gives you a clean bill of health." Concern for his soldiers is one thing; they're also of no use to him exhausted or addled.

"At this point I think it's safe to say the variety and nature of B.O.W.s encountered in the field is likely subject to a wide range of mutation depending on the source material and contagion strains utilized. We'll have to plan our own engagement protocols around adaptability; avoid falling prey to our own expectations as we proceed." The new normal. Try not to dwell on it.

Stadler grimaced as Andrei when over it one more time. Human mimic. That was a good way to describe it... and something that was simply horrible to remember coming after them. He could still feel the twinge of pain from the damage it did. But then-

"Wait, what? A tentacle beast? I was near the pool and I didn't..." He trails off. Swallowing. "Oh, fuck. Well, that'd going to be a nightmare later today. Jesus Christ, I didn't even see anything."

Everything else had been considered. Everything but that, and it was suprising on how much that concerned Stadler. That he came that close and didn't even realize it. But he swallows, composes himself, and continues.

"It's something we're going to have to do. No matter how hard. The more outbreaks their are, the more their forces are going to go aganist them, and we're not considering an actual militarized release to support a war. We /need/ to counteract this. Or the politicians do." Hey, maybe this is when Rick decides to run for senator. The autobiography would say so. "But, you're right. We need more training, we need to adapt to what the battlefield throws at us."

He pauses, his hand moving to rub the bridge of his nose. "But... I think that's all there is. We'll have the nitty gritty written down, but the rest is just... policy discussion we can leave for another time."

"We have enough evidence to rake Umbrella over the coals again, and that at the very laest will cut more funding to their development. I would suggest finding Markus Berger. The man extracted with us.. and he claims to be a specalist on the virus.. though not this specific strain. Maybe he can help us translate the letter or or he could have some form of evidence." Andrei notes as he moves to shift his shotgun into his lap, carefully scratching at a perceived bit of grime on the barrel before he hums softly.

"I'll follow up on some further leads.. see if we can break into some more evidence.. but beyond that, yes.. thats about everything that matters really."

Rachel gives Stadler a slight smile - it's almost like the smirk certain showgirls in Vegas wore. "Don't worry, I'm fine. I think. It's mostly my head... I wasn't shrieking like a little girl, was I?" It's... half-hopeful. "I mean, I'm not the greatest at field ops, but I don't think I'll need a shrink just yet." Huh. On the field, she'd most likely be running for her life...

The smile disappears, pursing tight as Andrei goes on. If anyone's watching closely, she does shudder at the mention of tentacles (and again at the face tenacle), but her face doesn't change - listening intently, shifting in her seat on occasion like her butt got too warm.

She nods gravely at Wesker's explanation, standing, nodding with his suggestion. She doesn't head out just yet, though - she moves over to Stadler, gently touching his shoulder. "See me in Medical if you want to talk."